


Debutante

by hes5thlazarus



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Family, Family Bonding, Family Separation, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Nonbinary Hawke (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-16 00:34:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,861
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28947501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hes5thlazarus/pseuds/hes5thlazarus
Summary: Leandra manages Hawke's debut ball, and surprises herself by having a lot of fun.
Relationships: Hawke & Leandra Hawke
Comments: 3
Kudos: 8





	Debutante

“Oh hush,” Leandra scolds. “You look fine.” She stands behind her firstborn, watching them stare horrified at the mirror. They do not like their make-up, they do not like their hair, and they especially despise the doublet she picked out for them: too bad. Marrion inherited all of their father’s panache but not of his actual fashion sense. Luckily, Leandra is there to guide the way. She only wishes her mother were there to smooth over the connections, and Bethany teasing Carver with a falcon-feathered hat as they both complain they cannot come too. Hawke sees her face fall and sits up straighter in their chair.   
  
“I look like a peacock,” they complain. Leandra smiles, catching her own eye in the mirror, and fusses with the back of her child’s collar. Age has come to her too quickly. This is not how she imagined she would present her child at their first ball--but she has spent too much time Carver died drowning in that sea of regret. She still has Marrion. She forces a smile onto her face.   
  
“You look like the scion of the Amell family,” Leandra corrects. “If you want to look less like a peacock, don’t strut like one.” Mischievous, she produces a magnificent blue hat with a feather in its brim. She places it on Hawke’s head, and turns it to a jaunty angle. Hawke makes a horrified face.   
  
“Mother, no,” they say desperately. “You already put me into a turquoise doublet. I’m  _ shiny _ . I won’t be able to turn without--blinding someone or whacking them in the face with that feather. And then they’re going to challenge me to a duel, and of course I’m going to win, but it’s  _ embarrassing _ .”   
  
Leandra puts her hand on their shoulders. “Well, you wouldn’t wear the gown. The hat for that is smaller. You can hide a dagger in the brim, at least. As a hatpin! And if you hit them, well--challenge them to a duel! This is your debut, my love. You have to make a splash. A  _ positive _ splash. Not a literal splash.” She remembers that the Viscount’s Gardens do have a duck pond--didn’t someone push Gamlen in, during her second cousin’s debut? She says repressively, “Please avoid the duck pond.”   
  
“I miss Lothering,” Hawke says. “I’ll take mucking out the stables over this.” Leandra rests her head against theirs, just for a moment, and closes her eyes. Hawke frowns at their reflection in the mirror. “Oh, Mother….”   
  
“I miss Lothering too,” Leandra says bracingly. Hawke reaches for her hand but Leandra pats them briskly on the shoulder. “No matter. It’s a shame Knight-Commander Meredith denied our request for Bethany to attend.”   
  
Hawke snorts. “If she even looked at it.” Leandra tenses. Templars have always unsettled her, ever since her cousin Amell was taken to the Circle, and Malcolm taught her to hate them. Meredith is the worst of that lot, strutting about on the backs of the nobility, bringing the worst fundamentalism back to the Marches. She tries to give her child as much distance as she needs, but she keeps finding that apostate’s manifesto in books about the house, and she finds herself agreeing. She can read between the lines of Bethany’s letters. The Circle must be destroyed--she wants her daughter back. She wasted so much time, running with Malcolm and her little girl--and poor cousin Revka and her five lost children. The Circle must be destroyed.   
  
“I wish your father were here,” she says foolishly. Malcolm had a dispensation, because of the deal he made with the Grey Wardens. The Wardens paraded him at the occasional ball, because he was as charming as their Marrion. He would have been able to charm even Meredith into letting Bethany out, she’s sure of it--or he would have broken her out, and they would have moved onto Rivain, or back to Weisshaupt.   
  
Hawke looks askance. “Did he ever go to parties with you?”   
  
Leandra laughs. “Once. Before the Wardens called him back. Not where I met him, of course. This was the fourth time.” She smiles at their reflection in the mirror. “By that point I had quite the crush. He was funny. And so much more grounded than the suitors my mother threw at me. I could actually see myself raising a family with him.” Grief rushes her, because they had it and lost and all that is left is Marrion, the last of the Hawkes, Carver is gone forever and Bethany is at the mercy of a madwoman and while she has Kirkwall, Kirkwall takes as much as it gives, and what more can she give away? She steels herself: Amells do not cry with make-up on. Neither do Hawkes, for that matter.   
  
Hawke gets up and pulls her into a hug. “And here we are,” they say. “My first ball.”   
  
Leandra sniffs and forces herself to laugh. Hawke looks like her, but with their father’s grandiose expressions. They have his smile and his way of waving his arms about, his sarcasm and sense of comedic timing. Sometimes Leandra feels like she is looking in the mirror. Then Marrion’s face will break into exactly the grin Malcolm makes when he knows he is saying something utterly absurd and is probably about to get punched, and it is as if he has entered the room and he isn’t dead, not really, when their child demands to be called by their name, when their child joyously lives his most chaotic impulses. “Yes, my love. We should send for the carriage--we want to be  _ fashionably _ late, after all.”   
  
“But it’s a five minute walk,” Hawke says, puzzled.   
  
Leandra shakes her head fondly. “Ferelden. I should’ve taught you better. Let’s go."

* * *

Leandra emerges from the carriage and smiles, drinking in the jasmine-scented night air. The du Parrys have always known how to throw a party. She steps aside to let Hawke out, who miraculously maintains an air of dignity as they step onto the ground. They look at her and she inclines her head.   
  
“Lead the way, love,” she murmurs, and threads her arm in theirs. Hawke wears turquoise, bringing out their sparkling blue eyes, while Leandra has dressed herself in something more sedate. She is a widow now, and has lost a child. Still, she won’t consign herself to black--Malcolm loved her peacock colors, and she does too, more confident in her violet and green and gold than Hawke is in their debut outfit. People pause, people stare, and she smirks as she hears the whispers behind the fans. She has always known how to make a splash. They are announced, and Leandra smirks at her title, Lady Hawke--she is proud to be an Amell and proud to be a Hawke, and even more proud how Marrion does not look back at her, but strides forward into the ballroom with perfect equanimity and grace. That, they inherited from her. She didn’t like to fight, but she could delay a bard, at the very least, and Marrion had proved an able student.   
  
Speaking of bards, the Viscount’s court is packed full of Orlesians, which is irritating. Her family had supported Perrin Threnhold, not just because of the magic that ran in their blood, but because they genuinely believed in the “free” part of the Free Marches. Worse than Orlesians, there is Grand Cleric Elthina, and Leandra curtseys at her, smiling curtly. Her father should have been Viscount, and would have, if it hadn’t been for the Divine intervening, if it hadn’t been for Meredith’s coup, if it hadn’t been for Elthina imprisoning poor old Perrin--but then, perhaps she would not have met Malcolm, perhaps she would not have adventured all over Ferelden, and had her children, and lost them too.   
  
Marrion whispers, “Is that a smile on your face, or a knife?”   
  
Leandra smiles thinly and says, “Hush your mouth. At least the Knight-Commander is not here.” She would have loved to debut Bethany, who is perhaps less of a peacock than Marrion but prettier. She hears a rustle and instinctively presses a hand to her bodice. She is wearing the amulet against poison her mother gave her, and she has a small blade. Cautiously, she turns, and her eyes widen, because it is her old friend DeLauncey, gray now, but still with that mischievous sparkle to her eyes. She blinks. DeLauncey is wearing an elaborate Orlesian-style mask, with antlers sticking out of the sides.   
  
“Messere Hawke, and your wonderful lady mother,” DeLauncey says, and flutters an Orlesian curtsey at them. Leandra mimics it. She had cut her dead after she left with Malcolm. She had not even answered her call when they moved to Hightown. She is too old to be disappointed, but still, it stings.   
  
Hawke bows extravagantly. Leandra rolls her eyes, and hides a laugh behind her fan as Marrion seizes DeLauncey’s hand. “Ah, to meet an old friend of my mother’s in the flesh!” they exclaim. “You’re even... _ more _ than the stories told. I do love your hat.” 

  
Leandra coughs a laugh into her hand. Perhaps they did listen to her etiquette lessons after all. Shame it was only the ones on how to insult people, but isn’t that what Hawkes do? Malcolm would be proud.   
  
“Charming,” DeLauncey says. I know, Leandra thinks proudly, I know. But DeLauncey recovers herself and eyes Leandra and prices out her finery. “And thank you for the compliment--it is the latest from Halamshiral, hunted straight from the Dales! The antlers come from those wild-elf deer, the halla, I believe they’re called. But!” She raps her hand with her own fan. “You must pay me a visit soon, Lady Amell.”   
  
“Hawke,” Leandra says. “My name is Leandra Hawke.”   
  
DeLauncey blinks. “Yes. I’ve heard many stories about your journey from the Blight. Perhaps you would be interested in speaking at my salon next week. We are fundraising for the Chantry’s project in Lowtown, and it would be lovely to hear your experiences.”   
  
Lovely, Leandra thinks sourly. She never saw the Chantry give out alms but for the missionaries at the Qunari compound, and most of the Fereldens were still stuck in Darktown. “I could put you in touch with someone,” she says instead. She does not want to be stuck as the refugee-made-good; she is Bethann Amell’s daughter after all, and her father was almost the Viscount.   
  
“Lirene, perhaps,” Hawke says blandly, and then shakes out a fan and flutters at their face. Leandra rolls her eyes. She can imagine the sharp-tongued, no-nonsense unofficial almoner let loose amongst the Kirkwall aristocracy, particularly since Orlesian fashions and marriages are so in vogue.   
  
“Oh yes,” Leandra says. “We must introduce you.” She takes DeLauncey’s hand. “Come by the manse next week, and we’ll arrange things then.” DeLauncey looks at her sharply, but Leandra is already floating away, Hawke in tow, giggling behind their fans.   
  
“Mother,” Hawke says happily, “she’ll whip them. Maybe literally.”   
  
“I know,” Leandra giggles. “And she might bring that warden friend of yours, too.”   
  
“ _ Maker _ ,” Hawke snorts. “That’d go along as well as a house on fire.”   
  
“She does have an ugly house,” Leandra says happily. “An eyesore. It’ll be an excuse to remodel.” She pauses. “He won’t really burn the house down, will he? I know he glows, but he does have some self-control, yes?”   
  
Hawke shrugs and makes a noncommittal sound. Leandra feels her hair turn gray and decides that she will simply not think about it, not just yet. Then a Starkhaven burr calls out, and Leandra tenses as the Grand Cleric herself approaches in the wake of a knight in gleaming white armor.   
  
“Ah. Sebastian,” Hawke says. “Er. Nice to see you here, great party. Um. Maybe I introduce to you,” they flourish at Leandra, finally remembering their manners, “my lady mother, Lady Leandra Hawke, Lord Aristide Amell’s daughter. This is Sebastian Vale, Prince of Starkhaven.” They look at their mother significantly, and then cut their eyes down. Leandra follows Marrion’s gaze and coughs a laugh--the boy has Andraste’s face as a damn jockstrap. Free Marcher fashions certainly have changed. Quickly she looks back up and curtseys, though not too deeply--she knows the Vael family were pushed out, and her father had taught her to hedge her bets. She glances at the Grand Cleric and nods coolly. There is no need to be too subservient to the woman who allowed Perrin Threnhold to be poisoned in her custody. The Amell family has never been a friend of Orlais.   
  
The prince bows solemnly. “It is my greatest honor to meet the lady who has taught Hawke, who came to me in my hour of need. I promise you that will not be forgotten, when I am restored to my throne.”   
  
“Aren’t you charming,” Leandra says. Trumped by her own child: she always thought she was the most eccentric of the Amells, but Marrion has brought home a Lord of Fortune, a Dalish blood mage, an abomination, a deshyr of the Merchants’ Guild, an escaped Tevinter slave who glows in the dark, and now a lost prince. She does wonder what her parents would think of this, and then she stops herself, and smiles. Malcolm, at least, would be proud. “Marrion does make a lot of friends.”   
  
“Allies,” Marrion says. “Connections! Occasional enemies, true, but that’s just the Kirkwall spirit.” Leandra gives them a look and Marrion tosses their head, faux-bashly. They grin a tad viciously at Elthina. “And how are you, Grand Cleric? Did you get our letter?”   
  
“Pardon?” Elthina says.   
  
“Oh yes,” Hawke says. “I wrote you a petition. And Knight-Commander Meredith too, and Viscount Dumar.” Good old Marlowe, Leandra thinks sourly, always incapable of finding time, even for old friends--hadn’t Gamlen pushed him into a duck pond? “Sebastian, I thought you said you’d give it to her, ‘by your own hand’?” Hawke smiles dangerously. “You did say by your own hand.”   
  
The prince looks uncomfortable. Leandra taps Hawke’s hand with her fan discreetly, to tell them to knock it off. They are only recently returned to their name, after all, and one does not harass the Chantry lightly.   
  
Elthina looks beauteously concerned. “I do apologize, Messere Hawke. We get so many letters from the faithful, it is difficult to keep up. Dear Sebastian did give me your note, but then there was the services, the giving of alms--the days run on. But how charming you look! It’s good to see the Amell family restored.”   
  
After all you did to destroy it, Leandra does not say, taking my cousin’s children away from her, threatening to take my husband away. And my daughter. My little Bethany. She knows intellectually that the Grand Cleric has done little to her personally but follow the orders of the Divine--that the Chantry ordered Lord Threnhold’s blockade destroyed, and that is is Chantry law that mages be taken from their families. But she remembers that sister in Lothering, who sang the Chant of Shartan so prettily, and talked about the plight of the mages with Bethany. She makes herself meet Elthina’s placid blue eyes.   
  
“Yes,” Leandra murmurs. “My oldest’s debut.” She smiles mechanically, and thinks about that night she ran away from the party, upset at something someone said about poor Revka, and in the garden came upon a dashing young warden, sitting at the fountain and reading a book. She folds her arms and looks at her Hawke. “The belle of the ball.”   
  
Hawke flourishes again, mocking a curtsey at the Grand Cleric. “That’s me! Mother, do you hear the music? That’s the one song you taught me how to dance to! You know what that means?”   
  
“Oh Maker no,” Leandra says, but Marrion takes her by the hand and onto the dancefloor, and Leandra is amused and grateful and a bit tearful despite herself, because they are so clumsy, they are so egregious, they are such a Hawke, and as she tries to tame their flailing on the dancefloor, she has to laugh, because they’re funny, not taking this as seriously as an Amell should, but isn’t that the point? They’re not Amells anymore, and never were, and she is glad to laugh in the faces of the worst of the Kirkwall aristocracy, because she is proud of her choices and proud of her Hawke.   
  
“You’re trying to distract me,” Leandra says, taming them into a waltz.   
  
“Yeah,” Marrion says. “I know it’s hard for you, Mother, so isn’t it better to laugh?” They try to whirl Leandra around but step on her gown instead.   
  
“Marrion,” Leandra says, “you’re doing this on purpose. Making a fool of yourself.”   
  
“And you’re laughing,” Marrion returns. “Mother, you can’t take them seriously, can you? Like that woman’s so-called halla-hat. I know for a fact that Lady Elegant took those off a deer, not a hart, and painted them and sold them for thirty sovereigns. You have to laugh.”    
  
Leandra’s jaw drops. She grins incredulously. “Thirty sovereigns? Oh, I can’t want for the next DeLauncey salon.”   
  
Hawke grins. “Lirene’s the one who sold Elegant the deer. Have fun.”


End file.
